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Dead zones in the water

By Mark Schrope

The Chesapeake Bay region on the US east coast defines itself largely by its seafood. Blue crab meat is ubiquitous, with the options ranging from crab cakes to crab-topped hamburgers. The watermen are fiercely proud of their fishing heritage, yet many are leery of seeing their children or grandchildren follow them into the business.

“My son, he got some sense into his head and started teaching school,” says Jack Crockett, who has spent most of his life working the same waters that three generations of his family did before him. The son of another lifelong waterman, Don Pierce, has already followed him onto the water. “But I’m going to do my best to get my son’s son to do something else,” he says.

A key reason for the watermen’s pessimism is that for many years they have watched a pernicious plague gradually taking over their bay. They know that on any given day, without warning, that plague can kill their entire catch. “It just makes it harder and harder to survive,” says Larry Simns, head of the Maryland Watermen’s Association.

The plague is a lack of the stuff of life, oxygen. In certain conditions, oxygen levels in the water can fall to dangerously low levels, creating what is commonly known as a dead zone. Fast-swimming creatures like fish can flee, but most bottom dwellers, such as shellfish, are likely to die. Some animals get so desperate to escape that they crawl or wriggle onto land in events called jubilees by the locals. Eels from a Danish fjord have done this, as have lobsters on a beach in …